Twitter's IOS App Is Riddled With Privacy Settings Glitches
As Elon Musk tries to launch the massive social media platform with some of his staff, Twitter users are reporting that some of iOS's key security features aren't working. Unable to protect your tweets or change direct message privacy settings for some users: "Some settings could not be saved" pop-up appears.
Photo Credit: Screenshot by TechCrunch
These basic privacy features work online even when the user is not in the iOS app. Of course, in most cases if a user really wants to be private, they can find a computer and do a secure tweet. But in emergency situations, when these centralized privacy switches are not widely available, it can pose a personal risk to users. Additionally, these bugs can be seen as a harbinger of what's to come on Twitter: users fear that as the Twitter team shrinks, more features may break and the site may become insecure.
Last week, former Twitter head of trust and safety Yoel Roth spoke at the Knight Foundation conference. When asked where he sees Twitter in a year, he said he doesn't expect a specific moment for the site to explode, but rather that the user experience will degrade over time.
"What are the canaries in the coal mine that indicate something is wrong?" asked Rath. "A couple of things I'm seeing are: Are basic security features not working the way you expected them to?"
Roth said the site would be particularly volatile if the secure tweet feature stopped working.
"When you create Twitter and you don't know what you're doing, and Twitter has had data breaches with sponsored tweets in the past, it's easy to screw up," he said. . "If your protected tweets stop working, turn them on because that's a sign something's seriously wrong."
The errors users are encountering when attempting to protect Tweets aren't an indication of the feature being turned off entirely, but it certainly doesn't bode well.
Twitter founder Biz Stone tweeted yesterday about the issue he was having on iOS. According to his screenshot, his quotes are not loading on iOS. Gizmodo reported that its employees have experienced the problem at least three times in the past week and that some users have experienced errors in Twitter sections.
These iOS issues come amid a battle between Apple and Twitter — Musk said last week Apple had threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store, but later dismissed it as a "misunderstanding" after meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook . Musk went so far as to say that if Apple and Google removed Twitter from the App Store, he would fix his phone.
But Twitter's most sensitive communities -- like sex workers -- feared Twitter might remove or downgrade its NSFW content to reassure Apple, which had previously removed social platforms like Tumblr from the App Store for containing content about child sexual abuse . Unmoderated (CSAM). ), but for adult creators looking to create safe and appropriate content, Twitter is the only major social platform that promotes their work without violating content guidelines. Once these creators get started on platforms like Tumblr and Patreon, their existence is in jeopardy as they have to start fresh and build their audiences elsewhere.
Left: What You See menu on iOS // Right: What You See menu on desktop. Screenshot from TechCrunch.
Some sex workers find that their tweets are suddenly flagged as sensitive and not viewed. On the web version of Twitter, you can check and uncheck the "Show media that may contain sensitive content" box. On iOS, users do not have the option to enable or disable this setting. SFW accounts of advocacy groups representing sex workers have been classified as confidential by some iOS users, even those whose web settings indicate they are willing to view confidential media.
Four accounts campaigning for sex workers' rights appeared on iOS, with posts flagged as sensitive Screenshot provided to TechCrunch.
"We know what we're seeing is a bug, but I think it's a bug, an A/B test, a rush job," Ashley, a sex worker and community organizer, told TechCrunch. "It may not be the intended functionality today, but we must look to a possible future to ensure basic human rights, user rights and disregard for widespread censorship without transparency."
Elon Musk did not comment specifically on how Twitter will deal with legal NSFW content in the future. But with Musk at the helm, Twitter is reminiscent of platforms like OnlyFans that allow NSFW creators to monetize. Paid DMs, a common feature of online sex jobs, appear to have been created by app researcher Jane Wong.
